Culturally different connotations of basic concepts challenge the comparative study of religion. Do persons in Germany or in the United States refer to the same concepts, when talking about “spirituality” and “religion”? Does it make a difference how they identify themselves? The Bielefeld-Chattanooga Cross-cultural Study on “Spirituality” includes a semantic differential approach for the comparison of self-identified “neither religious nor spiritual”, “religious”, and “spiritual” persons regarding semantic attributes attached to “religion” and “spirituality” in each research context. Results show: “Spirituality” is used as a broader concept than “religion”. Regarding “religion,” semantics attributed by self-identified religious persons differ significantly from those of the spiritual persons. The spiritual and the religious group agree on semantics attributed to “spirituality”, but differ from the “neither-nor” group. Qualifications of differences and agreements become visible from the comparison between the United States and Germany. It is argued for the semantically sensitive study of culturally situated “spiritualities”.
keywords: semantic differential, semantics, religiosity, religion, spirituality, cross-cultural.